I got a drawing tablet for Christmas. It's something I've always wanted to experiment with a bit, but the price on previous occasions I've looked always felt a bit prohibitive for something I don't know if I'll stick with — but in more recent years, these things seem to have become quite a bit more affordable, so I didn't feel too bad sticking one on my wishlist.
As such, you can expect the stupid drawings on this blog to take on a certain… different quality from what they have been in the past. I am making no promises whatsoever that they will be better, but at least now they will be drawn by hand with a pen rather than scrawled using a mouse that isn't really fit for the job.
Drawing is something I used to love doing when I was a kid. I have particularly fond memories of being at my Nan and Grandad's house, armed with nothing but a pad of paper and some pencils, and that would keep me occupied for hours at a time. Sometimes I would draw things from my own imagination; at others I would attempt to recreate things I had seen myself elsewhere. I recall one of my best pieces of work being a recreation of Asterix from the famous comic book series; that was in full colour and everything and, of course, my grandparents were good enough to proudly display it on their fridge.
Doodling was a big part of my time at school also. I've talked on numerous occasions about the "Rough Books" my friend Ed and I had, and these were inevitably filled with silly cartoon strips, fake adverts and doodles of our favourite characters that we had created. On more than one occasion our predilection for doodling got us into a bit of trouble, but I think most teachers knew that it was ultimately fairly harmless compared to what some of the other kids got up to.
A tablet is half of the equation when you're talking about digital art. The other half is the software you use. Up until now, the free and excellent Paint.net has always been my tool of choice, but I feel like if I want to do a bit more with this thing, it might be worth looking at some other tools. I know Clip Studio Paint is quite well-regarded, so I may have to give the free trial version of that a bit of a go and see how I get on. I also have access to Photoshop via work, but modern Photoshop has so much shit going on in its interface that I find it borderline indecipherable compared to the CS2 and CS3 versions I'm mostly accustomed to, so I'd rather not get too involved in that.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to having a play around. And you will hopefully excuse the inevitably variable quality of the illustrations you will see on these pages as I get to grips with my new toy!
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